Happiness Challenge: Change This *One* Word to Change Your Life

Did you know that if you change just one word in your life, you can make a huge impact on what comes to you in life? With just one word, you can affect what comes your way in love, in work, in friends and in fun!

People build cities on top of mountains and dreams because they believe they can. No buts about it. (Machu Picchu windows, by Amy Spencer, 2010)

See if you remember this quote from Star Wars:

Luke: “I can’t believe it.”
Yoda: “That is why you fail.”

Yoda’s right. (Well, duh, Yoda was always right, wasn’t he.) And the message is clear: If you can’t believe you can do or have something, you’ll never do or have it. Ever. You just won’t.

When I was single, I went into a shop for a friend of mine to pick up her fixed engagement ring. And when I saw all those other rings under the glass, I thought, “I can’t even imagine myself ever having one of those.” And that, I realized, was a big problem. So I started to picture it. To believe I would one day have a ring like that—I wasn’t focusing on the flashiness, but on the idea that I’d meet a partner who would give me one as a symbol of wanting to be with me forever. I have a ring like that now. And an amazing guy who has vowed to be with me to go along with it. But I didn’t meet him until I believed I could. And it wasn’t an easy road.

Oh, trust me, I tried to believe. I wanted desperately to believe. I begged the universe to help me believe. There was just one word that kept getting in the way: the word but.

Recognize it? It usually sounds something like this:

• “I want to meet someone but there’s no one good out there for me.”

• “I want the job, but they’ll never hire someone without the right experience.”

• “I want to own a house with a pool someday, but there’s no way I’ll ever make enough money for that.”

Those “buts” are the biggest thing standing in the way of you believing you can do, have and be what you want. So…

Try this: Say out loud the thing that you want most in life right now and come up with the “but” that is keeping you from achieving it (or the “buts” if there are a few). Then, replace “but” with “and…because” and change the outcome of your sentence and your life. Battle the but! So now, you’ll sound more like this:

• “I want to meet someone and there has to be a good person out there for me, because I personally know a lot of people who have found love for themselves!”

• “I want the job, and even though I don’t have the exact experience they require, I know I’m capable because I have skills that could do even more for their company.”

• I want to own a house with a pool someday, and though I can’t afford one today, I know I’ll have one in the future because my appetite for success, my perseverence and my desire to swim my summers away won’t let me settle for anything less!”

If you can’t believe it, you will fail. This Yoda know. So get started on the road to believing by not letting your buts get in the way! Change that one word and you can change your life. And I know this because it’s worked for me.

You can have everything you want. Please, believe that and be on your way.